Hayek’s intellectual legacy has been used and hijacked by a large number of intellectual and political movements, both in Europe and in America. This paper traces the continental sources of Hayek’s liberalism. It argues in particular that Hayek’s liberalism is inspired by older liberal traditions in Central Europe in which freedom is not the absence of constraints, but made possible by cultural rules and institutions. This tradition is supplemented by a more modern German rationalist tradition based on Weber and with roots in Kant. We also demonstrate how Hayek used French liberal thought as a counterpoint for the development of his own (neo-)liberalism. In doing we seek to correct the dominant Anglo-Saxon readings of Hayek, and help to make sense of some crucial tensions in Hayek’s work, most notably the tension between conservative and liberal elements in his thought.